One thing that is severely lacking in Haitian education is critical thinking. Schools in Haiti only ask knowledge level questions. Students are simply required to hear information and then recite it back to the teacher without any demonstration of understanding or application to their life. Schools/teachers here don't understand how to ask students to create, hypothesize, invent, classify, infer, compare, contrast, criticize, question, or critique.
Most classes look like this: The teacher stands in front of the class. Some students might be sleeping while others are talking. If they don't want to pay attention, the teacher doesn't make them. The teacher reads from a little book or lectures. Then, the students recite over and over again exactly what the book says until is it memorized. Classroom walls are bare. No student work is visible within in the room. Sounds terrible right?
At our school, we are trying to change the standard for education. It is no simple task. The problem is, everyone in Haiti was educated in the system described above. Our teachers don't understand the value of projects because they were never asked to do them. They don't understand that lecturing is not the best thing for the students. They don't understand that they can control the students' behavior. They don't believe that they have the ability to either inspire or bore the students. To most Haitian teachers, if a student can say the correct answer, it doesn't matter whether or not the student actually understands it in a different context.
Being a teacher is not a job that is desired by many people. Instead, it is a job that most people do only for the money. So, asking our teachers to go above and beyond and teach in a way that makes no sense to them is not easy.
In my classroom, I try to model good teaching and creativity. To give you an idea of how far my students have come: In the beginning of the school year, I read a story to one of my classes. After the story I asked them to tell me ONE thing they could remember from the story. They could not tell me a single detail....not a character's name or what the story was about. They simply stared at me with blank stares. I thought they were all brain dead.
Fast forward six months. (Skipping lots of details involving hard work and frustration)
My students have now started writing stories as a class and illustrating them!!!
As we write the stories, they use both Creole and English. They are not the best stories ever written by any means. But, I never imagined that they would be able to do this.
I am one proud teacher.
Its hard for me to explain just how much these students have had to learn and overcome to get to this point. If they can do this, they can do anything. These kids of mine are going to be world changers. With each book that they read, with each sentence they write, with each idea they formulate, Satan shudders with fear.
“True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their
own.”
-Nikos Kazantzakis
